Title: The Great God Pan is Dead
Author: Julma-Nala
Genre: angst
Rating: K11
Summary: I'll be old, probably ancient and frail before I cease with my grieving.
A/N~Originaali 10 #3, omasta sanalistastani sana 02. Uskoa.
The Great God Pan Is Dead
Pan used to look at me while playing his songs. My Pan didn't play any kind of flute, but the guitar, and he played everything I asked him to play. His voice smooth velvet and so low that sometimes it resembled a soft growl. That voice was a heaven to me, singing me to sleep with sweet lullabies, making me crave for much more than a mere hug with every song Bruce Springsteen ever wrote. Pan used to watch me with pride like I was an exotic pet of some sort, very much loved, but always somewhat inferior to him. I loved that, just because he would never leave me, no matter how difficult I was at times. He used to say we'd grow old together and become crazy old farts who would shout at the neighborhood's kids and whack them with wooden walking sticks when they'd be noisy. I never liked kids anyway, so he was my hero. And Pan used to tell me every day how much he loved me.
Used to.
It's ludicrous to expect the god of the wild like Pan to get accustomed to living a boring life of study and work, and yet you did. We all did. Even I told him that there would be a time when he'd go to work and pay his taxes like the rest of us. Just look where it got him. There is only one fast rule concerning death: save it for the end. I just never thought the end would be so close. Tammuz, the great god Pan is dead, go and tell everyone we killed him. I'll probably never forget the last talk I ever had with him.
"When will you grow up? You can't feed yourself with those lucid dreams." My tone wasn't very reprimanding, I was disarmed by his overbearing confidence. He barely winked at me and opened his arms for me. Naturally I stepped closer to get a hug. My dear could have passed for Adonis just as well as for Pan, his blue eyes looking down into my own and his toned body enveloping my smaller frame.
"Have no fear, my darling," he said, tauntingly mimicking the tone of an aristocrat. "I have everything planned." I smiled like I always did when he spoke. He sounded so sure of himself, but also innocent like a child who thought he knew where he was going and didn't yet know the world was going to lead him astray.
"Well, what's your mighty plan then?"
"I'm going to find the Neverland."
I had put on my best pout. "The Neverland? Are you going to just leave me here and go hunting down fairytales? And besides I thought only kids can find the Neverland." And he smiled warmly and kissed my forehead.
"Of course I won't leave you here, honey. I'll take you with me, and I'm Peter Pan, I never grow up. You'll get to be my Wendy." And I hugged him tighter, happily unaware of the lie he was telling me. He left without me. I suppose Tinkerbell got jealous. Or then he realized that Wendy did grow up in the end and that I would, too. Girls are so serious about their duties that they don't have time to remain children forever.
Perhaps my Pan just didn't fit into our world. Perhaps the idea of being stuck with studying, working and paying taxes got the better of him.
The one thing I find the hardest to believe was how much he lied to me. I embraced everything he said, cradling his words in my mind like little puppies, caring for them as if mine. I never suspected a thing and if there were any warning signs, I still haven't figured out what they were. I was young and stupid and thought that even if I had missed something and something was wrong, my love would fix it. So I held on to my delusions of a happy future together.
Now it's different. I'm still young, though I feel older than I ever will be, but I'd like to say I'm no longer stupid enough to be fooled like that. Our relationship was based on comforting lies. The occasional little white lie can't hurt anyone. Yet it did. His lies of never leaving hurt me in the end. My lies of the nature of the outside world at least didn't help him accommodate.
He still won. I could never have hurt him as much as his death hurt me. Pan's death was sweetened with yet another lie and I'll be old, probably ancient and frail before I cease with my grieving. I'll never understand how that kind of a life can just stop and vaporize to the air like that. Such a waste.
Pan's last lie to me was probably meant to make me feel better. He made sure that I wouldn't be alone when I heard what had happened, so he told me to go home to wait for him until he got off from work. He didn't let me stay with him until his death, but he left me a note: "I love you, darling. It's not your fault, I suppose this world just isn't for me." Lies, lies, lies. I see that now. Wasn't my fault? I wasn't good enough to even get a warning before the final solution. He wouldn't even have me there beside him. If only he had told me his reasons, I would've stayed with him until he would have been gone and I like to think I would've accepted his decision. If only he had told me why. He knew I've always hated guessing.
For a while I hoped that I had been interested in girls instead of guys. Girls usually try suicide with painkillers or some other, not a very effective way, guys just pull the trigger. After a few days I realized my hope was silly. Pan never failed in anything anyway. How on Earth could he have failed in taking his own life? The whole idea was bizarre, especially during times like these when Youtube will guide you through tying a hangman's noose. Being a girl couldn't have saved him if all my love didn't.
For a longer while I wished I could also die and join him in death. Pan was gorgeous even in his coffin. I decided against following him: he wanted to leave me here, and I respect his choice although it makes me feel as hollow as if someone just chopped off half of my body.
For me the world has always been a two-lane road: die trying or try dying. So in a way I understand why he did it. Our goals were different, mine to live up to everyone's demands and achieve everything, his to be free. You can't possibly be free in this society where it is considered lunatic and potentially illegal to want to live in the woods. If you can't be free anywhere else than in death, why wait forever taking your chances with getting struck by a lightning?
While the priest speaks, I'm being buried in my own thoughts, too. I hope I could just slither there beside Pan, forgetting the reverend and everyone else as well. It's not like my Pan ever believed in any other gods than himself. So self-confident and proud he was, almost arrogant at times. How could committing suicide even cross such a magnificent mind? I always thought he believed himself to be at least immortal, possibly more. What if I had loved him more? What if I had noticed something before it was too late? What if I… nothing, because 'what if' doesn't really count. I saw nothing, I did nothing, and even if I had loved him more – if that would have even been possible – I don't think it would've made him immortal. I'm nothing but a silly little girl who thought she could cure someone who was way beyond help. I'm not the bloody philosopher's stone, so I couldn't make him immortal.
I feel like screaming when they start filling the grave. I fear he'll suffocate down there, why couldn't they bury him in the woods? The soil of the city graveyard is hardened, spoiled with rotten corpses and how can he breathe in there? Please don't bury him, he's not dead, I plead in my mind, but cannot get anything out of my mouth. He can't be dead. My god can't be dead. Who will I have faith in now?
A beloved son, brother and friend
Leon Auron MacDucan
Born 15 April 1994
Died 18 March 2014
Is now on the way to a better place
It really should say that the great god Pan finally found his Neverland. I drop one crimson rose on the grave and stand silent for a while. Only one rose, never more than one. The god of the wild always hated well-groomed garden flowers.
"Bye, love," I mouth before turning to leave. "I'll visit often." A comforting lie again. I could never bear to see his grave again. My tears quickly form waterfalls down my cheekbones as I walk away. I feel truly pathetic, crying like a baby, but I just can't help myself. All the times he made me want to cry are coming out now, since I was never actually able to make myself cry in front of him. That might have made him sad.
Should I have cried in his arms? Even just for once? Did I actually protect him to death, trying to make his path easier, thus keeping him from seeing the true nature of the cruel world out there? Was that it?
I had better not to think about that, but I guess that in the end it doesn't even matter. In the very end nothing matters, not my thoughts, not me, not anyone, not anything. He proved that to me himself. I didn't matter to him enough to make him want to stay.
My Pan is dead.
